


the adventures of mr. bunting

by cloudycats



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, pacifist chaos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-24
Updated: 2020-07-01
Packaged: 2020-09-25 03:54:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20370256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cloudycats/pseuds/cloudycats
Summary: “Corvo, I can't do this anymore,” Piero says.  “I know, I know, I was the one who gave the terms on our first meeting, but this... arrangement of ours.  I can't keep up with you.”The workshop looks like it was recently vacated by a dragon.  Piles of money glitter beneath tables and in corners.  Loose coins can be found jammed into delicate machinery and sitting at the bottom of Piero's morning coffee.  A mixed heap of Overseer masks and raw munitions walls off the table across from the entrance.  A line of rolled-up paintings leans against the stairway.Corvo shrugs – not his problem – and goes on emptying his pockets onto Piero's floor.It takes most of an hour.





	1. the adventures of mr. bunting

High Overseer Campbell is disgraced and branded a heretic, and the Abbey is marked off-limits to the public pending an internal investigation. The city-wide announcements are clear on these points.  
  
The rest of the story trickles out in bits and pieces, in the unmasked and noticeably less well-armed Overseers patrolling the city, in the wanted posters for a man in a skull mask for unspecified crimes, and in the sudden flood of activity in a black market already bloated from plague conditions.  
  
An Overseer talks to a guard, who spreads the word to his family and coworkers, and it only catches further from there. The rest of the story is this: An Overseer finds Campbell snoring away in a hidden room in the depths of the Abbey. The door, usually disguised as a part of the wall, is wide open. The room contains evidence of Outsider artifacts. Desecrated items of faith. Scandalous and heinous activities.  
  
The Overseer who stumbles across this illicit trove gathers the rest of his brothers, informs them of his findings, shows them the room where Campbell's snores provide a backdrop. They brand Campbell as a heretic and cast him from the Abbey.  
  
While this is happening, a man in a skull mask strolls brazen as you please through the deserted halls. He clinks with every step, and his feet land with sounds like cannon shots. This is because his pockets contain nearly all of the Abbey's coins, valuables, weapons, and heretical artifacts, not to mention a dozen pastries stolen from the cooling racks in the kitchen. His pockets, the Overseers suspect, must be conduits to the Void itself.  
  
When the Overseers realize they're being robbed blind, they leave a skeleton guard behind in the hidden room and scour the Abbey for the intruder. Meanwhile, the thief heads down to stuff all of the newly uncovered evidence into his pockets. The Overseers stationed there try to shoot him. He steals the bullets out of their pistols.  
  
The next day, Doctor Galvani, the art collector Bunting, and the Golden Cat are hit within hours of each other. There are forty-three witnesses, all City Watch. The masked felon's bounty triples overnight, easily becoming the highest price on a burglar in the history of the Empire.  
  
As a bit of an aside, the Pendleton twins suddenly come down with a terrible stomach bug, complete with nausea, delirium, and mild fever. Custis vomits three times in a row, bringing up something new with each heave. They decide to retire to their manor for a week or so to recuperate.  
  
For his next heist, the masked felon steals Anton Sokolov, national treasure and creator of one of the only two effective plague preventatives, from his own lab. This is nothing, because and then –  
  
– and then there is the Boyles' party.  
  
\---  
  
“My,” says Miss White, “you're really getting into this, aren't you?”  
  
The man has on the masked felon's distinctive skull mask, a grotesque, theatrical creation of wire and glass. He is wearing the masked felon's coat with grime-stained sleeves. He sports the masked felon's unruly haircut. The bootprints of river muck and street dirt he tracks across the polished floor follow the masked felon's pattern and size. The back of his left hand shows the marking that Overseers and Watch officers have seen glowing against the masked felon's skin. His crossbow, pistol, and sword are of the same make as the masked felon's.  
  
He walks in through the front door. His invitation gives his name as Mr. Bunting, the art dealer robbed by the masked felon not so very long ago. He does not answer to the name Mr. Bunting.  
  
He appears to enjoy playing with his sword, flipping the blade in and out on its mechanism. A Watch officer by the buffet table has started twitching at the sound. “Be a gentleman and bring me a drink?” Miss White asks, tilting her head just so.  
  
Mr. Bunting proves himself a gentleman. Miss White, along with half the guests and guards, watches him pickpocket four people on the way to the wine fountain and another two on the way back. The latter number includes one of the hosts. He hands Miss White the glass.  
  
She sips flat wine while Mr. Bunting circles behind her and steals her coin pouch. “Lydia is dressed in red,” she tells him over her shoulder, “and Waverly is the one in black.”  
  
He meanders off without responding, pocketing a small gold statue of a whale on a table he passes. Miss White follows.  
  
Mr. Bunting slips a key off a guard's belt and uses it to unlock the door to what turns out to be one of the manor's whale oil closets. He heads in, pulls out the tank of oil powering the wall of light that blocks off the main stairway, sets it carefully on the ground, and walks back out, locking the door behind him. He leaves the key in the lock.  
  
He walks right into an Overseer standing guard against a wall, knocking the poor man over, then promptly trips over the massive device strapped to the Overseer's chest. On the way down, Mr. Bunting's pistol accidentally discharges, and an explosive bullet drills through the music box's case and sets its innards aflame.  
  
The Overseer gives a wordless shout, lunging for Mr. Bunting. Mr. Bunting, in surprise, reflexively kicks him in the unprotected face hard enough that the Overseer topples over with a groan and a bloodied nose.  
  
Mr. Bunting brushes himself off, shrugs apologetically, and heads upstairs. Nobody stops him. Not for lack of effort, if the shouts and pistol reports and clanging blades and shattering glass and explosions and dreadful Overseer music are any indication, but about two minutes later Mr. Bunting reappears in a swirl of blue light at the bottom of the stairs, sprints over to the Boyle sister in white, presses a book with a blank cover into her hands, then runs for the door right as the guards upstairs cotton on to his disappearance.  
  
Miss White raises her glass in a silent toast and pours her wine back into the fountain. Esma Boyle faints. The party ends early.  
  
\---  
  
“We can't seem to stop him,” Thomas says.  
  
Daud looks up from a fascinating grey whorl in his desk. “What?”   
  
“The masked felon. Attano. He's coming here, we've tried to stop him, but – ”  
  
“What are you doing that for? Did I tell you to do that?”  
  
Thomas makes a small, confused noise.  
  
“No one can stop him. He's a force of nature. Don't even try. Let him do what he wants.”  
  
“Sir?” Thomas tries weakly.  
  
“You'd best check on your belongings. He's going to want to steal them,” Daud advises him, shooing him away. Off he goes, leaving Daud alone in his office with only the sound of someone rearranging his bookshelf upstairs for company.  
  
With the way Corvo's going about things, Daud doesn't expect he'll get his death wish granted. But Daud's been wrong about people before. There's always hope.  
  
He reaches over to take the card out of the audiograph.  
  
Ah, looks like Daud will have to live with his mistakes after all. The audiograph is empty already. The room is quiet. Three guesses who took the card, and the first two don't count.   
  
“Thomas,” the Outsider guesses.  
  
“You've gotten better at picking your monsters,” Daud says.  
  
The Outsider doesn't emote like a human does. It's less about expression, less about tone and posture and word choice, than it is the color of the Void flickering at his edges, the temperature of the air, the shapes behind his eyes, the itch of the Mark on Daud's hand. Daud feels the Outsider's interest through his skin, smells it in the blade-keen scent of krust acid. This whole adventure must be new and exciting for the old whale too. First Corvo being Corvo, and now here goes Daud paying him a compliment.   
  
Not that the Outsider is innocent of joining in on the anarchy. Daud has never once known him to visit the waking world without being dragged into it through a shrine, yet here he floats.  
  
“Are you having fun?” Daud asks.  
  
“Corvo certainly is.”  
  
“I'll bet,” Daud mutters. “How much coin did he take on the way out?”  
  
“Are you sure you want to know?”  
  
Mm. Maybe not. It can be a surprise in the morning, Daud decides, his gift-wrapped present to himself for surviving to wake up tomorrow. Something to really make him look forward to the rest of his life.  
  
“Look at you, finding a silver lining in a storm cloud,” the Outsider says. “I thought there was nothing more I could learn about you, Daud, but this has been a week filled with surprises.”  
  
“You're being unusually open about your favoritism today.”  
  
“I don't usually have favorites,” he says.  
  
Ouch. That drew blood.  
  
The Void drains from the room as the Outsider takes his leave. Back to observing his newest Marked, Daud supposes. Daud spares a moment of pity for Corvo, since no one really deserves to weather the full force of the Outsider's attention – but also he only spares a moment, since Corvo might have just bankrupted him.  
  
\---  
  
The lessons Emily Kaldwin I takes from her unorthodox rise to power are strange and inimitable. History will remember her as a wise and effective ruler, and she will look back on her life at the end and find little to regret. By some ungodly miracle, the state of the nation's economy remains excellent throughout the entirety of her reign.  
  
Corvo Attano learns to wear gloves in public, except for when he's eating, or when he's writing, or when he's reading, or when he's practicing swordplay, or when he's opening doors, or when he's performing any activity that typically calls for hand usage. He does not, really, learn to wear gloves in public. No one ever calls him out on it.


	2. a detour from the railroad tracks

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the first chapter was the original one-shot, basically just gameplay transcribed verbatim with some color commentary  
from here on out we're leaving the game behind and going into what's turned out to be a crack compilation

**SCENE I. The Hound Pits Pub, interior.**  
  
**Havelock**  
  
When shall we three meet again,  
In thunder, lightning, or in rain?  
  
**Martin**  
  
When the hurlyburly's done,  
When the battle's lost and won.  
  
**Pendleton**  
  
That will be ere the death of Corvo.  
  
**Havelock**  
  
Broughtest thou the poison to lay him low?  
  
**Pendleton**  
  
Right here in my pocketses it –  
  
**Martin**  
  
Brother, dost thou forget thy lines?  
  
**Pendleton**  
  
Oh wait. Oh no.  
  
_HAVELOCK and MARTIN heckle PENDLETON for forgetting the poison._  
  
_PENDLETON, IRATE, interrupts the tongue-lashing to tell them that: a) of course he didn't forget the poison, he's a sad drunk not a stupid drunk, and b) it's not just the poison, EVERYTHING is gone._  
  
_EVERYTHING?_  
  
_Even the POCKET LINT._  
  
_HAVELOCK and MARTIN fall silent._  
  
_The Loyalists look down._  
  
_The Loyalists look up._  
  
_The Loyalists look anywhere that is not at each other._  
  
_It is VERY AWKWARD._  
  
_The Loyalists agree, via TELEPATHY, to never speak of this again._  
  
**SCENE II. The Hound Pits Pub, interior. A different room, but simultaneously.**  
  
_CORVO rummages obnoxiously through HAVELOCK's trunk. He finds a black-and-white map, flips it open, and peruses with great interest. He discovers a section of the city that has not experienced him. It is splattered in blood-red Xs, exclamation points, gravestones, skulls, and fish food containers. The FLOODED DISTRICT, flooded and abandoned by men, here be dragons and beware all ye who enter here, turn back at once, or the burglar will face the assassins._  
  
_CORVO pens a note to himself in HAVELOCK's journal to acquire rain boots. He does not specify how he will acquire them._


	3. the outsider's thoughts

The Outsider begins, “What I don't understand – ”

For all that he allocates a significant amount of attention to watching Corvo, the Outsider doesn't actually interact with his favorite Marked too often. There is much about Corvo Attano that he does not understand, but he's content with that state of affairs and has no intention of deliberately affecting it. He will speculate in private and never ask Corvo to clarify. Distance makes the heart fonder – he prefers not to know the world so well that it can hide no more mysteries from him. Since he cannot point at a map and label it with “here be dragons” (minus the one mountain range in Pandyssia where dragons live), he goes through a terrible amount of trouble to find and make his own dragons. The interesting ones, too, not the scaly flying ones who spend most of the year hibernating in volcanoes, dreaming about the culinary qualities of goats.

It's a hit-or-miss sort of operation with little in between. Once one loses his interest, it's nigh on impossible to recover it. Vera: miss. Daud: miss. Morris: miss. Delilah: _miss_. The boy: sentiment.

Then Corvo, of course. Dear Corvo.

He doesn't like to ask Corvo what he's thinking. There is one question, though, that he just doesn't even know where to start with answering. It's about a choice that ranged so far from Corvo's normal pattern of behavior that it doesn't seem like it should have happened at all.

The Outsider has finally caved in to asking.

“ – is why_ Campbell_,” he finishes. “The Pendleton twin found themselves mildly inconvenienced.” So mildly that they didn't even realize they had been targeted. “Lady Boyle found herself mildly threatened. Sokolov found himself mildly annoyed. And Burrows was reappointed.”

There's a story there, as there always is.

Corvo, after prying Burrows like a particularly slimy pearl from his fortified shell, took him back to the Hound Pits' cage, where he huddled in fear until Corvo returned from the Flooded District. Corvo deposited his gains with Piero, then fetched Burrows and went back to the scene of his most recent rampage to – unusually – hand off a present without collecting any tithes in return. Maybe the satisfaction of a job well done was all the reimbursement he needed.

Daud let Burrows stew in a hole for a few days, then took him to Captain Curnow. Emily at this point was back in the Tower and the story of Burrows' treachery was public knowledge, so Captain Curnow offered him to Emily.

Sat on the throne that once belonged to her mother, her father yawning over her shoulder (the hand he covered his mouth with was the Marked one), before the eyes of all her court, the young Empress reinstated Burrows as Royal Spymaster.

At which point Burrows finally had his long overdue nervous breakdown, so Emily shook her head and created a new government position on the spot just for him, one with little responsibility and almost no stress: City Gravedigger.

Things might have ended with that, but the next evening Daud visited Burrows at his new appointment and had him dig a grave. It took Burrows several turns of the clock. Manual labor was a new experience for the former Regent, and Daud had brought _specifications_. Whenever Burrows paused for breath, Daud stepped forward and checked the dimensions of the grave with a tape measure. He had an exact size in mind. Time wasn't a factor. He had packed a breakfast on the not unlikely chance it took Burrows all night.

Sometimes, if Burrows didn't get back to work quickly enough, Daud would compare Burrows against the tape measure after he finished measuring the grave.

Burrows had several more nervous breakdowns.

He finished as the sun came up and stood there trembling as Daud went over the grave millimeter by millimeter. “So you _can _do something right,” Daud said eventually, snapping the tape back. “Any last words? You've had all night to think up something adequate.”

Burrows blubbered something unintelligible.

“Nice,” said Daud.

He transversed away to join the Whalers who had decided to follow him to Serkonos, leaving Burrows alone with his own grave. Daud was lucky he'd already bought his vineyard and passage out of Dunwall by the time Corvo visited him.

What the Outsider means by all this is that Corvo's handling of Campbell makes very little sense. The Heretic's Brand was an inspired choice, but it might as well have been made by a different person. Corvo has never harmed anyone physically since the Outsider Marked him. (The Pendletons hardly count.)

Except, for some reason, in the case of Campbell.

So now the Outsider waits expectantly for an answer.

Presently his Marked says, “Why are you talking at _me _about this?”

“Asking Corvo would be too easy.”

“Why are you this way,” Daud rasps.

“It began with my tragic backstory – ”

“_No_,” says Daud, horrified.

The Outsider obliges. Daud's made some almost passable choices lately. He does that so rarely that a reward seems in order. Positive reinforcement and so forth, all the things he didn't earn as a child. “I brought you here to brainstorm, not complain.”

“I get to sleep after,” Daud says.

“Oh, Daud. Yes, I only need you for this. You can leave when you're done.”

Daud nods. “You've thought of the obvious.” The Outsider raises an eyebrow. Daud grits out, “Coldridge.”

The Outsider gives this its due consideration. “We are speaking of the same person, aren't we? The man who, faced with the assassin-for-hire who ruined his life, thought an appropriate revenge was to steal your pocket change.”

“He stole a _little _more than that,” Daud gripes.

“I notice that you're breathing.”

“You're definitely not the only one.” Something the Outsider isn't surprised by: Daud still wears red in his dreams. It's why he's so boring. Twenty years might go by and Daud would be the same person at the end. “Right. Well, what did he do when he found Campbell? I heard the stories, but those get exaggerated.”

The Outsider recreates the scene for him, Void debris constructing a facsimile of the Abbey and Daud's memories filling in for Corvo, Campbell, and Curnow.

With Corvo's habitual elegance, he opens the secret room after the other two have gone in, the sound alerts them both, and Corvo blinks behind Campbell as he's turning and gets a sleep dart in him. Curnow about-faces, and Corvo blinks behind him and gets him too. Daud looks like someone staring into the sun: squinting, and a little astonished that the little light in the sky might actually be capable of blinding him. “This is a master at work.”

“You might learn something.”

Daud straight-up ignores him. This is why Daud is not the Outsider's favorite. Thoughtfully, as Corvo hefts Curnow over his shoulder: “Two panic-jumps. Good instincts.”

Corvo makes it to the other side of the building without being seen, then drops Curnow on top of a table, where the first person to walk into the room will instantly spot him and set off an alarm.

“Is he returning to Campbell?” Daud asks.

“No, this is when he raids the Abbey. The Overseers find Campbell while he is doing so.”

“You know, this could be....”

That was quick. If Daud's put it together already, the reason must have been much simpler than the Outsider suspected.

Daud's probably wrong. He usually is. He's a perpetual motion machine of poor judgment. He's going to say something like, “Have you considered the possibility of human error,” and the Outsider will be so disappointed in him.

Corvo sniffs the room over for valuables and edibles and vaguely-glitteries. He considers a vase, considers his coat pockets, and fits one into the other. So it begins.

Daud says, deadpan, “He might just have forgotten to close the room behind him.”

_Typical_ Daud.

The Outsider replies frostily, “Corvo is above these things.”

“_Wow_.”

“You don't have to try to drag him to your level.”

Daud throws up his arms. “Well that's the best explanation I have, take it or leave it. Can I go now? I don't even know why you're trying to figure out why _Corvo _does the things he does. There are more productive ways to waste time.”

“_Do_ let me know when you succeed in producing a drinkable beverage,” the Outsider says, and kicks him out before he can get another word in.

That's the problem with Daud: he has the same amount of imagination as the rock his face was smashed out of. An interesting question lands gift-wrapped at his feet, and his knee-jerk answer is, “Well, what if it was an accident.” "Why are you the worst Marked, Daud?" the Outsider might ask, and Daud would reply, "Well, maybe I don't mean to be," as if he genuinely expects anyone to buy that. It's why he's the worst Marked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1/16/20 edit: deleted a useless paragraph


	4. the abbey of the everyman's thoughts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wildly ooc overseers to go with the wildly ooc outsider  
i'm not sorry

When the Lord Protector turns up at the Abbey's doors for his scheduled meeting with the High Overseer, he's met by a small contingent of Overseers. The number of greeters increases by one or two every time he visits. Currently it sits at an uncomfortably crowded eight.

The latest conscript to Lord Protector-greeting duty is Williams. Attano offers Williams a nod that leaves him a little weak-kneed. Does Attano notice every new Overseer or is Williams the only one?

Brother Jayden's ringing voice drags Williams back to reality. Jayden, a Lord Protector duty veteran with five meetings under his belt, requests oddly sullenly that Lord Attano wait here while he informs the High Overseer of his arrival. He then proceeds to back slowly away until he's out of sight up the stairs.

Williams stares. Jayden is a man who he only knows in passing, but he's never noticed him acting in any way but sensibly. He looks around at his other brothers for support, but it seems like he and Lord Attano might be the only two people who noticed him walking backwards up the stairs. The other Overseers are still watching Attano.

In fact, Williams gradually comes to notice, they are doing _nothing else _but watching Attano.

Williams, feeling terribly out of place, swallows and chances a look as well.

The Lord Protector doesn't appear to be bothered by the undue amount of attention, which Williams can't help but admire. Williams himself has never held up well under others' eyes, not even with the anonymity afforded by a mask. He still wakes up in a cold sweat some nights from nightmares of misremembering a Scripture's name mid-conversation just as all the other conversations in the mess hall reach a lull. It's nearly reassuring, actually, the Lord Protector's nonchalance in front of so many staring golden masks. The next time he dreams that dream maybe he'll be able to pretend he's Lord Attano.

Really, though, what's happening? Why are they staring? Why is Jayden taking so long? Why did Williams let Brother Benedere drag him into this? Not that Williams regrets being here, it's an honor to meet the Lord Protector even if it's not really a meeting per se and Lord Attano doesn't even know his name and the silence bearing down is so unbearably rude and awkward that Williams is actually starting to sweat under the weight of it, which is embarrassing as anything and he's rather grateful now that no one is paying any attention to him outside of the Lord Protector who's just somehow caught his eye again (is he imagining it?)....

Jayden rushes down the stairs, trips over his own feet, and barely saves himself by grabbing the banister on the last step. “He's ready to see you, Lord Protector,” he says, with a note of barely contained hysteria that must be residue from the near-fall.

The tension, already thick enough to cut with a knife, takes on the consistency of the knife itself. Williams, just about to shuffle aside to give the Lord Protector room to move through, freezes like a rat caught in a spotlight. He daren't breathe.

The Lord Protector, of course, is immune to whatever strangeness has befallen Williams's brothers. He takes a stride towards the –

He takes –

He –

“_What?_” Williams blurts.

Seven golden masks snap towards him.

Williams almost chokes on his own spit. It turns into him coughing into his fist, which turns into a shaky “Sorry.”

The silence is palpable. Williams sort of wants to die. Did – did no one else see that? Is he overreacting? He's overreacting, oh, he knows he is, he should have just kept his mouth shut, no one else was surprised at all when the Lord Protector disappeared without warning into thin air –

No. No, he's not overreacting. That's not normal. People don't do that.

Do they?

No one else is saying anything....

Jayden makes a noise that's a little like a hiccup and a little like a sob and a lot like a man who wishes he was in a religious order that allowed the devil's drink. “Brother Jayden?” says Williams tentatively, like an idiot, and then they all get to watch Jayden melt into a miserable ball of Overseer at the base of the stairs.

\---

A day after what Williams genuinely believes was a fever dream, Brother Benedere corners him up against a wall. Benedere seems remarkably upset; he must have called Williams's name at least a few times without Williams hearing. “Brother,” Benedere greets, all but speaking directly into Williams's ear so close is he pressing in.

Williams is not sure what to do with any part of this. “Am I needed for something?” he tries.

“Yesterday,” Benedere whispers. Oh, no. No conversation that begins with that word ever goes well. “When Lord Attano was here. You – I mean, did you...?”

“What?” says Williams.

Benedere clears his throat. It's a very acoustically complex sound when it's happening directly next to your ear, Williams has no choice but to notice. “Did you notice him leaving?”

“I was helping an old woman get around the sermon hall.”

“No, I don't mean when he was _leaving_. When he went up the stairs after we met him, do you remember how he did it?”

Williams blinks. “He... walked?”

He nearly jumps out of his skin when Benedere slams a hand into the wall next to his head. “Are you _one hundred percent certain_,” Benedere growls, “that that's what happened.”

“I don't know!” Williams squeaks. “I don't know what I saw! Can you step back a – ”

“What do you _think _you saw?

Neither of them is masked. There's nowhere to look except for Benedere's smoldering brown eyes, and for many reasons Williams cannot look at Benedere's smoldering brown eyes. This is awful. Why did he get out of bed this morning?

“I don't think I was paying attention!”

Benedere hisses, “_What makes you think that_?”

“He was there one second and then he was gone when I looked again!”

Benedere stumbles back finally. Williams can breathe again. “You saw it too,” Benedere says, almost accusatory. “Why didn't you say anything? I thought I was the only one.”

“I don't know, I thought – ”

“Right, you thought you weren't paying attention,” Benedere interrupts, frowning. “But we saw the same thing. Our other brothers might have as well. This needs to be confirmed."

\---

Benedere hauls Williams along in tracking down the other members of the Lord Protector greeting squad. It takes some prodding for a few of them (which Williams happily lets Benedere handle), but everyone admits to seeing the same inexplicable moment. Except for Jayden, who starts sobbing into his non-alcoholic grape juice as soon as Benedere pops the question. Benedere flees the scene with all due haste while Williams rubs circles on Jayden's back and tries futilely to pry his death grip off the bottle.

Jayden's version of events remains a mystery.

Still, Benedere believes that such an overwhelming body of evidence cannot be denied. He resolves to take it to the High Overseer, and Williams, though not entirely sure of what is happening, tags along with his brother as moral support.

The High Overseer agrees readily to the meeting without fuss and without delay. He's much nicer to his fellow Overseers than Campbell was. He's much nicer in general than Campbell was. Williams likes him.

He listens without visible judgment to Benedere's story, and when Benedere finishes he says, “I see. What are you suggesting happened when you met with Corvo?”

The High Overseer is on first-name basis with the Lord Protector. Williams is a little envious.

Benedere looks uncomfortable for the first time. “It's not my place to level such... allegations against Her Imperial Highness's esteemed protector, but from my brothers' unanimous testimony I'm afraid to say that... it could be witchcraft.”

Williams gasps. He didn't even consider that.

The High Overseer steeples his fingers on his desk. “We'd have to take measures against the Crown if that was indeed the case,” he says mildly. “This is a serious accusation you've brought to me, brothers. A very serious accusation.” He's unflappably calm in the face of disaster. Williams doesn't know how he manages it. Williams himself feels like the ground is cracking apart under his feet. The Lord Protector, a heretic? It's unthinkable.

“Do you have something to add, Brother... it's Williams, right?” the High Overseer asks. Williams's heart skips again. The High Overseer knows his name too?

Williams swallows. His mouth is dry. The pressure mounts. “Uh,” he says. An excellent start. He swallows again. “Uh – it isn't witchcraft, High Overseer.”

It's easier to plow on once he's begun, momentum carrying him where confidence can't, and the High Overseer's politely raised eyebrow is clearly an invitation to keep going. “It can't be witchcraft. I mean, if the Lord Protector was a witch – ” the suggestion itself feels like heresy on his tongue “ – his opinions carry a great deal of weight with the Empress. If the Lord Protector was a witch, surely the Empress would be noticeably enthralled. She'd be subverting the Abbey's influence and trying to consign the Empire to the Void. But she hasn't done anything of the sort. Her policies are all focused on rebuilding Dunwall after the plague – pulling Dunwall _back _from the Void. And you'd think that if the Lord Protector was confident enough to use witchcraft within the Abbey's walls in full view of multiple Overseers then he'd also be confident enough to use it other places, all the time, but there haven't been any other reports associating him with witchcraft before this.”

“You _would_ think that,” says the High Overseer. “There is nothing on file, no. So, Brother Williams, what are you suggesting as explanation?”

There's no stopping Williams now. Even though it breaks his heart to, he says, “Sir, I believe the Lord Protector is a mass hallucination.”

“A mass – ” High Overseer Martin swivels his chair away and buries his face in his hands. Williams empathizes. It's a shocking revelation. A second later Martin turns back around, perfectly composed, and motions for him to continue.

“Coldridge Prison is inescapable without the Outsider's direct interference,” he says. No one contradicts him, though he notices Benedere still looks skeptical about the conclusion he drew. That's alright. The evidence is irrefutable; he'll come around once Williams lays it out. “We all know that Lord Attano wasn't a witch at the time of his wrongful arrest or he would not have remained in prison all six months. But if he wasn't a witch, then he could never have escaped from Coldridge.”

“You believe that Corvo Attano has been a mass hallucination for the past several months,” says the High Overseer.

Williams nods. “Yes, sir.”

“The official investigation determined that he escaped with outside – ” The High Overseer breaks off suddenly. After a moment he says, “You know what, never mind. Please, continue.”

“I believe that the true Lord Attano was executed at the end of his sentence, and that after her coronation Empress Emily appointed a new Lord Protector. But, sir, you're aware that we of the Abbey are especially practiced at noticing even the slightest traces of magic, to the extent that we sometimes find heresy where a layperson would notice nothing strange. Lord Attano's imprisonment and execution were so wrongful that his soul never found rest and instead remains on this mortal plane. He shadows the current, living Lord Protector as they carry out their duties, which is why we see him in place of the living Lord Protector and why it sometimes seems like he can vanish into nothing. Our eyes and our intuition are in conflict.”

The High Overseer's expression is indescribable. He's swiveled away and covered his face again.

Benedere looks unimpressed. “I don't know, Williams. That's a stretch.”

So Williams plays his last hand, the foundation upon which the rest of his theory rests its weight. If this isn't enough, nothing would ever be. “But Brother Benedere, tell me – how could a man as handsome as the Lord Protector really exist?”

It's a beautiful sight, watching the flower of enlightenment bloom behind Benedere's eyes. “I've been so blind,” Benedere whispers. “It's true. It's really true. Then does that mean Lord Attano really did die all those months ago?”

“I'm sorry,” says Williams.

He takes Benedere into a brotherly embrace as the first tears begin to fall.


End file.
